Dumb Doctors

Some of the dumbest people I know in this world are medical doctors. Regardless of what many people may think, it’s been my personal experience with doctors, that they have a highly misguided sense of superiority, which probably comes from the God complex that one develops after holding the lives of others in their hands everyday.

I have come to this conclusion after peddling my wares, door to door, from one clinic to another in the past. Overall, most of the doctors felt that they knew more about computers than me and usually proceeded to lecture to me about computers. Seeing that I was the poor salesman, I usually refrained from correcting them even though my veins were bursting at their stupidity and illogical thinking.

And most recently, one of my previous clients is deciding to switch over to a different provider of a clinic management system. This system is by a Malaysian multinational company with branches in several countries. How they had gotten so big with their lack of computer knowledge bewilders me but I guess that I can say that it is just another regular con job and the doctors deserve them.

They have recently been in contact with me because they need to convert the data from the old database to their system. It is a standard part of the process as the doctors would need their patients’ historical data. A rotten person might just ignore their requests for help but I am perfectly happy to help, as long as it does not involve too much time on my part.

I was previously told by my ex-client that this new company was able to extract part of the data from the database. My ex-client told me that the company had been given one of the data hard disks to play with and they were able to extract some of the data. This got me very happy as I knew that if they could already do that, it would be easy to help them extract everything else.

But as usual, this is far from the truth. There is no reason for this IT company to lie to me as lying to me would inevitably just create more trouble for them. So, when I got several phone calls from them, and finding out the truth, I ended up being a bit rude in my politest possible way.

First, they asked me if I could dump all the data for them into a useful format that they could then import directly. As this would involve a lot of time consuming work on my part, I was not prepared to do this unless they were prepared to pay for my time. Knowing the price that they were charging my ex-client, I knew that they couldn’t possibly afford me.

So, I told them that I could not extract it, but I could definitely explain it to one of their technical people how to do it and they could do it themselves. All I needed was someone who was familiar with public key encryption (because all the information in the database was encrypted) and SQL (a standard database language). I even told them what database I had used in the system.

Several days later, they told me that they were unable to do it because they had nobody who knew Linux. This resulted in a very polite lecture from me as I asked her to explain to me in what way does the operating system have any bearing on the database or even PKI for that matter. You can mix and match databases and operating systems as they are functioning on a different layer entirely.

Several days later, they called me to say that they could not do it because they were unfamiliar with the database that I was used. This again resulted in a very polite lecture from me as I told them exactly what to download and that they could run it on WindowsXP just as well. I cannot imagine any IT company telling me that they do not know an industry standard database in use since 1986. It is quite unheard of, if you ask me.

Several days later, they called me to say that they were unable to even read the disk as they did not know how to read it. This shocked me because if they were unable to even read the data off the disk, how were they able to tell my ex-client that they could extract some of the data? Well, fair enough if they did not know how to read a simple hard drive and I volunteered to help them pull the data off into an external USB disk for them for free.

Anyway, my point is this. Most of the IT companies out there are basically con jobs manned by people who do not know very much about computers. Most people in this world think that computers are something simple that even their teenage neighbour can do. As a result, there is a big disparity between expectation and delivery but thanks to Microsoft, people have been used to getting shafted with substandard products for decades.

There are some really good people and products out there but you just need to be willing to look for and pay for them. If you pay peanuts, expect monkeys. You deserve what you get. The same goes in every field, including computers and IT.

On another thought, maybe I should get this company to hire me as a consultant but this would mean that I’ll need to be nice to them. Never mind.